New moonkin AOE rotation “memekin”

The 7.1.5 patch had substantial changes to moonkin’s AOE damage, and the nerf to Emerald Dreamcatcher caused the ED single-target build to feel more clunky. So, what does this mean for DPS rotations? One strategy has been bouncing around the druid discord that I’ll briefly describe below (the primary focus being AOE cleave padding). As this rotation has existed for 1 whole day (after Gebuz did great damage with it in a TOV run this week), this is still not very well fleshed out. This post as a result will be updated as needed. This is based on the work by Gebuz & the writeup on Discord by Eratsu. Also special thanks to Velerion for being awesome.

The new AOE balance druid rotation is called Memekin! Or, if you don’t like the name memekin, you can call it Turkeyo Drift. Yeah, that name isn’t much better. 😉

The goal of memekin is to spend your astral power on Starfall (keeping up Sellar Empowement buffs). You can gain the damage benefit of more than 1 Starfall on the same target but Stellar Empowerment does NOT stack bonuses. You also maximize your DOT up-time on anything you can DOT.

Yes, that’s right. Starfall is back!
What talents do you take for Memekin?

Force of Nature (this got a pretty heafty buff and Starlord is useless if you never get empowerments).

Soul of the Forest (reduce starfall’s cooldown).

Shooting Stars

Stellar Drift.

What is the Memekin “rotation” for AOE damage?

Keep up DoTs (sunfire/moonfire). Stack them as fast as you can on targets.

Try to keep up at least one Starfall at all times, in order to constantly benefit from Stellar Empowerment. You can stack multiple starfalls on the same spot on the ground, since Damage stacks now, so use it as your astral power spender to not overcap on Astral Power.

Use Moon spells accordingly (Just make sure to not overcap on Astral Power)

Use Solar Wrath to Generate Astral Power when you have nothing else to cast.

Use Force of Nature on Cooldown

Use Celestial Alignment as usual.

You don’t use starsurge at all? That’s right. No starsurge!

What does a “memekin” do for single-target damage?

This rotation does not really change for Single Target.

You can theoretically change to Starsurge During Celestial Alignment, if you are going for a pure Single Target Fight.

Not likely to be the best single-target damage, since it’s super cleave focused, but this is an option in things like Mythic+ where you don’t get to swap around talents to Single-Target builds for bosses. For actual single-target raid bosses, you are probably better off sticking with true single-target builds.

How do Legendary items interact with “memekin?”

If you have Oneth’s Intuition (OI), only cast Starsurge if you have free Oneth’s Intuition procs, and only use Lunar Strike when Empowered (so, rarely).

If you have been using Emerald Dreamcatcher (ED), unequip it if you have any other legendaries for Memekin AOE. Otherwise, ignore the Equip effect & use it as a high ilevel stat stick. You should still use can still use ED/Fell Essence build for single-target with regular single-target talents. Just make sure you don’t use OI & ED together in the same single-target focused build, since the effects don’t play nice together.

The Fell Essence ring is based on astral power you spend, so it works in Memekin builds just as well as ED builds.

What is my stat priority?

Use your highest ilevel stuff, prioritizing Haste > Mastery > crit > versatility. This is subject to change with more testing, so hold onto gear pieces you can swap around.